Well, the nation-wide suffering for African Americans has just intensified with the recent unemployment data delivered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s most recent report showed that while white unemployment only went up from 8.6 percent to 8.7 percent, black unemployment went up from 15.6 percent to 16.3 percent. This increase is at a rate that is 700 percent higher than the increase for white Americans.

The numbers tell an interesting and sad story about the forgotten economic hardships being felt by black people all across America. First, black unemployment is nearly double that of white Americans. While the rest of America finds itself screaming in pain over unemployment rates between eight and nine percent, black America is asked to remain silent about unemployment rates as high as 15 – 16 percent. While U.S. government officials are not acknowledging African American economic hardship, the United Nations is. As of April, the UN announced that it is investigating whether consistent black unemployment in America is a human rights violation…

The worst group of all are black teenagers. Their unemployment rate already stood at a startling 40.6 percent last month. This month, it rose to 45.4 percent, which is not only the highest unemployment figure of any group, it is also 90 percent higher than the unemployment rate for white teenagers, which held steady with a modest increase from 23.5 percent to 23.8 percent.

Job creation under the auspices Black Run America (BRA) comes in many forms, most importantly in the overrepresentation of Black people in the Public Sector. In spite of the existence of BRA, Black unemployment continues to lurch upward; shocking when one considers the inherent value proposition that a diverse workforce provides, according to a multitude of major corporations and colleges that promote – above all else – the unremitting importance of both a Black presence and Black involvement in every aspect of 21st century life.

In general, the labor market problems experienced by Blacks and Hispanics are associated with many factors, not all of which are measurable. Some of these factors include a tendency to be employed in occupations with high levels of unemployment, lower average levels of schooling, greater concentration in the central cities of urban areas where job opportunities may be relatively limited, and the likelihood of discrimination in the workplace. These factors and others may help explain the acute labor market difficulties Blacks and Hispanics encounter, especially during economic downturns.

Outside of the United States Postal Service, all of these private-sector fields of employment yield high growth potential and an obvious financial windfall befalling those Black people who pursue these illustrious vocations. Better yet, none of these jobs require an overabundance of education to perform.

“We view diversity as a winning business strategy and use it as a tool to deliver results,” said Susan LaChance, vice president, Employee Development and Diversity. “It makes good business sense.”

Forty percent of postal employees are minorities as compared to 32.8 percent in other federal agencies. Fifteen percent of executives are African-Americans. The Postal Service employs approximately 124,000 African-Americans, 52,000 Hispanics, 50,000 Asians, 1,300 native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islanders and nearly 4,000 American Indian/Alaska Natives.

One can only laugh at a company that continues to trumpet its racially diverse workforce at a time when it posts billion dollars losses; all on the tax payer’s dime.

It appears that any stimulus plan to benefit Black people and create sorely needed jobs must start in the one industry that is already a vocational path for many Black people and a constant source of community pride and entrepreneurial activity –the barbershop.

Barbershops are a pulse of black America — a place where the frankness of what the men and women who frequent them say is exceeded only by the passion with which they speak. They are one of the places white politicians should go to gauge the thinking of black America. And they ought to be the sounding board for any black politician who wants to do more than just pay lip service to the idea of representative government.

“When you leave the barbershop, you look better, but you also want to feel better,” the elderly owner of Randolph-Wright’s fictional barbershop says. I know what he means.

In France, the bourgeois once spent their time in salons debating important issues of the day. Black people gather in the local hair salon to discuss these issues:

“To fully appreciate the political thought and action of African Americans, it is imperative to understand that these interactions are more than social. They are the spaces where African Americans jointly develop understandings of their collective interests and create strategies to navigate the complex political world,” wrote Harris-Lacewell in her forthcoming book, Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought, to be published in March by Princeton University Press.

The conversations reveal ideologies, which are tied to black intellectual traditions and linked to African-American public opinion, she said.

Harris-Lacewell was joined in her work by graduate student Quincy Mills, a black male doctoral candidate in History, who spent four months hanging out in an African-American barbershop on Chicago’s South Side to listen to the patrons’ conversations.

“They talked about white power structures and the relationship of African Americans to the state and to capitalism. They critiqued black leaders, discussed the political power of the black church, argued about reparations and cheered on African-American Olympic athletes,” Harris-Lacewell said.

The 2002 film Barbershop inadvertently showed why high unemployment rates are found in the Black community, conversely showing the importance of the barbershop – both culturally and economically – to the Black community:

On a cold winter Saturday in Chicago, Calvin Palmer, Jr. (Ice Cube) decides he’s had enough of trying to keep open the barbershop his father handed down to him. He can’t borrow enough money to keep the place open, it’s not bringing in enough revenue, and he’s more interested in coming up with get-rich-quick schemes to bring in easy money. Without telling his employees or the customers, Calvin sells his barbershop to a greedy loan shark named Lester Wallace (Keith David), who lies about keeping the place the same and suddenly makes plans to turn the place into a strip club.

Sadly, the barbershop cannot supply an unlimited number of jobs and careers to an increasingly beleaguered segment of the Black community, who find themselves separated from their former vocations.

Of course, one look at the jobs that Hispanics perform with the highest percentages should provide enough fodder for an immigration reform movement to arise among Black people. A direct correlation should be obvious between high Black unemployment and high levels of illegal and legal immigration, though those bemoaning the continued proliferation of out-of-work Black people steadfastly refuse to acknowledge or even discuss.

Thus, the onus is on Barbershops to continue to support the dreams and aspirations of Black people everywhere. They must continue to the bedrock of Black employment, a place where a haircut is only one facet of the job performed, and the center of cultural vitality of the community.

If not, what industry will pick up the slack?

Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes the onus on barbershops, the primary industry that must continue to off-set the high rates of Black unemployment. Without barbershops, one can only shudder at the high rates of Black people who would be considered not economically viable and worsening the bleak economic outlook for Black employment.

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Race Realism

‘Man is a mammal and subject to the same biological laws as other animals. All animals, including Man, have inheritable behavioural traits. The concept of complete environmental plasticity of human intelligence is a nonsensical wishful-thinking illusion.’

From titans to Lemmings

“The time for talk has ended, only course of action open to us is WAR!”

"The time for talk has ended, only course of action open to us is WAR!"

The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. — D.H. Lawrence

Ayers’ Plan to Kill 25 Million Americans
Larry Grathwol, Weathermen, William Ayers, Communism, History
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“The most effective informer the F.B.I. ever placed among the Weathermen” (NY Times) Larry Grathwol describes how William Ayers and other Weather Underground leaders cheerfully planned to deliver the United States to foreign occupation, and proposed to murder 25 million Americans.

Grathwohl: I brought up the subject of what’s going to happen after we take over the government. You know, we become responsible for administrating, you know, 250 million people. And there was no answer. No one had given any thought to economics. How are you going to clothe and feed these people?

The only thing that I could get was that they expected that the Cubans, the North Vietnamese, the Chinese and the Russians would all want to occupy different portions of the United States. They also believed that their immediate responsibility would be to protect against what they called the counter-revolution. And they felt that this counter-revolution could best be guarded against by creating and establishing re-education in the Southwest where we would take all of the people who needed to be re‑educated into the new way of thinking and teach them how things were going to be. I asked, “Well, what is going to happen to those people that we can’t re‑educate, that are die-hard capitalists?” And the reply was that they’d have to be eliminated and when I pursued this further, they estimated that they’d have to eliminate 25 million people in these re‑education centers. And when I say eliminate, I mean kill 25 million people. I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of whom have graduate degrees from Columbia and other well-known educational centers and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people and they were dead serious.

Bring it on! WE WILL FIGHT YOU, WE HAVE BEEN MAKING BOMBS AND BUYING LEGAL AND ILLEGAL WEAPONS FOR YEARS, AND WHEN THE TIME COMES MY FELLOW PATRIOTS AND MYSELF, WE WILL TAKE TO THE STREETS, YOU WILL HAVE TO KILL US TO TAKE THIS NATION, BRING IT!!